Zombie Zero (14 page)

“The zombie revolution is officially over,” she said.

She pressed a button on her wrist.

Chapter 15

Under the earth, in a back yard that had been a back yard through many generations, there was a bomb shelter. Industry had crept over the orchards, and lawn had crept in over the steel trap door; Angela never would have found it if it hadn’t been for her desire to extend the sprinkler system to grow some tomatoes. Now, three years later, a full garden lined the fence; there was a writing and recording studio in the shelter. Angela had played hell getting the futon down there; now she was glad she had powered through the task. It gave her and her husband somewhere to sleep while they waited out the apocalypse. High above the earth, across a wide expanse of ocean…

One by one, Allen watched the howlers run down the open cargo ramp and leap from the plane. At first he felt cold prickles of fear climb his spine as each monster dwindled from his view. After watching for a while, and listening to their joyous hungered howls, Allen looked down at himself. He thought of the buildings he had leapt in the last few days, the fences and walls he had burst through, the flesh he had chewed and the blood he had drunk. He rapped his gnarled knuckles on his own ridged skull, listened to the dull ring of iron on iron.

This was not a time for fear. This was not the kind of body that you shrunk from physical challenges in. Being a zombie and being afraid of anything suddenly seemed completely ridiculous to Allen. For a moment he considered leaping from the plane with no chute. It was highly unlikely to cause any real damage if he did, and the chances of him dying were slim to none. It was just the kind of thing Todd would do, Allen thought to himself.

Most of the howlers had jumped, one every mile or so for the last few hours. There were still about a hundred remaining, waiting their turn. Allen had nodded a single nod over three hundred times, indicating that the next could go. He nodded once more, to the howler watching him with trembling anticipation. The monster sprinted down the ramp and leapt, howling as it dropped from his view.

Allen approached another howler, the last one in line.

“Are there any other parachutes on board?” he asked.

The beast shook his heavy skull.

“Do you think the fall could kill us?”

He shook his head again.

Allen cast a glance at the open maw of the ramp. He nodded to the next howler. This time he didn’t watch her run down the ramp or leap off, but he did hear her hungry howl. He was eyeing the troop’s chute.

“You can go next if you give me your chute,” Allen said.

The monster’s hands were a blur over his own body, too fast for Allen to see as straps and buckles were unfastened. In the same moment that the pack hit the floor of the plane, he sprinted to the ramp. By the time Allen knelt beside it, he could hear the howl dwindling to nothing in the night. He started to look up, to ask for help or demand it; then he simply touched one of their minds, and suddenly Allen knew everything the troop knew about parachutes.

He nodded to the next waiting howler. Heavy footfalls struck the deployment ramp, then the howl came as he went.

Allen shrugged easily into the pack, securing the straps about his thighs and chest. It felt terribly uncomfortable, like some invisible jujitsu fighter had multiple holds on him. He walked to the end of the ramp, nodding to another howler halfway down. Allen wondered how they were all running in these get-ups as the monster dashed past him. At the end of the ramp he stood, swaying, looking out into the endless darkness. There were lights down there, but they looked awfully far away.

Edging back from the wind as it swirled behind him and ushered him forward, Allen turned to look at the remaining howlers. They all were watching him, waiting. He realized they wouldn’t wait without him aboard. Despite all of his previous attitudes about authority, Allen had enjoyed being in charge. For the sake of his pride and his desire to be far from any of them, he raised his voice for all of them to hear.

“You can all go now,” he called out. “Spread out as much-”

Allen’s voice was drowned out by the the pounding of heavy feet on the metal ramp. He edged carefully to the side of the plane and clung to a cargo net until several minutes after the last howl had died away. Then he dropped the gun and ammunition they had forced on him when he boarded, letting them fall to the floor. The pistol was in a holster, with rounds stacked two deep the full length of the belt. The second clip was snug in the housing designed for it, part of the holster. Despite all of the weight, the whole thing only sat at his feet for a moment. A gust of wind grabbed the belt and holster and pulled them into the night.

With a sigh, Allen let go of the netting. He stepped forward; his foot had hardly lifted when another gust of wind snatched him from the ramp. Suddenly Allen was falling, and spinning, and he didn’t know which way was up or down or how far from the ground he was.

His new knowledge came back to him, and Allen relaxed his body into an easy cross. The wind whipped at his face, screaming between his rows of teeth and making his skinless cheeks flap like bloody flags. He saw lights, far below; he tilted slowly left and then forward to rocket toward the earth. There were not many lights out there. Maybe Allen could find a nice little neighborhood to eat. He had no desire to see a coliseum full of flesh-eating howlers, or what the Eiffel Tower looked like with zombies clambering over its crisscrossed beauty.

He didn’t even realize he was howling until he pulled the puff of fabric from his hip and tossed it into the wind. The canopy opened with a loud crack; and then, everything was quiet but his hunger. Allen let the howl peter out on its own, and stayed deliberately silent as he descended. Wind still whipped at his face, though not as fast or as loud as before, and the hunger still gnawed at his belly. Allen was silent as he concentrated on his landing. He could see so much better now; if the wind kept up, he would reach one of those spacious back yards just in time to flare and drop.

Allen narrowed his eyes and fought his urge to howl, counting the heat signatures behind the walls of the house as he approached.

Chapter 16

On a sixty foot yacht dubbed the U.S.S. Senator, the senator stood on the deck and scanned the horizon. A beautiful young woman wearing next to nothing approached from behind, cooing softly. “You tried to help,” she said. “You alerted the broadcast stations, and they said they had been told to sit on the story. So you paid for all those planes, and I can’t think of anything more that you could have done.” The senator nodded, and frowned. “You saved me,” the young woman added. Finally the senator smiled, turned and took her wife in her arms. She closed her eyes, and kissed her. A few miles across calm waters…

For some reason the cruise ship had been re-routed, and they had offered Doug a ridiculous amount of money to keep doing two shows a night for as long as they would be waylaid. He might have refused, and insisted on getting home; but three very compelling reasons had kept him from making a fuss. First was Candi. Doug didn’t know if that was her real name, and he didn’t care. What he did care about were the perfect breasts she wanted him to touch all the time, and the beautiful fresh female faces she found to bring to the cabin every night.

Fans had been handing him plenty of smokeables from day one, and the pile had grown in his little safe to a towering mountain of joints and buds. There had not been any reason to doubt his wisdom in staying on until his set was interrupted the third night.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.” The voice boomed over the loudspeakers, overriding his own. Doug gritted his teeth. He had spent two minutes setting up, and he’d had them in the palm of his hand. He could see Candi sitting in the front row with a dark-haired beauty that kept winking at him. Everything had been going so well.

“Please stay calm,” the voice continued. He was hard to understand, with his Italian accent and obvious inexperience with a microphone.

“You stay calm,” Doug said into the mic, annoyed. “And shut the fuck up. We’re trying to have a little thing I like to call a comedy show here.”

The audience laughed, and it was even harder to hear the next thing the captain said.

“What was that?” Doug cupped his ear, and tilted his head as if listening intently to wisdom spoken from on high.

“I repeat,” the voice boomed amidst static. “We are being boarded. Please stay calm.”

“What the…” Doug grinned at the crowd. “I either smoked way too much pot before the show, or he just said we’re being boarded.”

No one laughed. They were all looking around nervously.

“Oh, come on,” Doug said into the microphone. “What’s the point-”

“All guests please return to your cabins. Staff please report to muster station B.” The captain’s voice was still too loud to talk over, and remained difficult for some to understand. “Please remain calm and proceed without delay. We are being boarded by hostiles.”

“Hostiles?” The sound system had cut out; even if they had been listening, no one could have heard him. Doug watched the backs of a couple hundred heads all trying to squeeze out the same two exits. He looked at the microphone in his hand, glanced at the stand halfway across the stage, then looked back out at the exodus.

Doug dropped the mic.

Candi was at the edge of the stage, trying to pull herself over the edge without lifting either leg too high. Her blouse stretched downward with her efforts just as her skirt lifted with them as she pressed against the stage. Doug could see the color of her bra from up here, and he suspected anyone who turned to look could see what little of her underwear there was to see. He reached down to her, and lifted her onto the stage beside him. The momentum drove her into his arms, and he felt her breasts press into his chest.

She looked up at him. Her eyes were wide.

“Should we go back to your room?” she breathed.

Doug eyed the exits. One was at a standstill, as people shoved both ways and somehow no one moved forward. The other was moving, but far too slowly. The people who could see and think at the blocked egress were making their way to the other, and it was slowing even further as he watched. Then the first scream split the air, followed by a shout.

“What is that?” It was a man shouting, and suddenly men and women alike were raising their voices in wordless terror. People began to flood back into the empty nightclub, running to hide or trip and fall to the floor.

“Come on.” Doug grabbed Candi’s hand and pulled her backstage. He glanced over his shoulder before letting go of the curtain, and froze.

A monster burst through one of the entrances, tossing a half dozen people easily aside as it bore down on another. It was tall and lean, and terrifying. Doug got a clear look at the thing as it leapt on top of a woman and sunk its teeth into her skull. Her hair and face were a mask of blood in an instant, her features hidden behind the splash. He dropped the curtain, but the sight of the thing seemed burned into his brain.

He pulled Candi through a doorway, shut and locked it behind them.

“What is this?” Candi looked around.

“It’s the green room,” he answered, dismissively. “Did you see that thing?”

Her eyes were still on the signed framed photos and the lighted vanity. She settled in a chair. “Why do they call it that? It isn’t green.”

“Never mind,” Doug frowned. “Did you see that thing?”